Friday, October 14, 2011

An Occupy Observation

An Occupy Observation

I've finally gotten a little time to follow the Occupy stories and I'm struck by the contrast between Iowa City and Des Moines. The attitude, from what I hear, is much more relaxed in Iowa City and more confrontational in Des Moines.

The Iowa City police are being given some of the credit, though their cooperative and selective enforcement of the law begs the question of why they're so letter of the law when it comes to a voting age adult who wants a beer.

But more of the credit is due to the participants. They deliberately chose a town square type park, close to downtown but not in the way. The more natural spot would have been the Ped Mall, but they didn't want to get in the way of locally owned businesses.

But in Des Moines, it seems like organizers deliberately chose the highest profile spot possible, the Capitol grounds, where confrontation and arrest was most likely. Did law enforcement over-react? Sure. But I kinda think that was the goal all along.